Frankly I am amazed at the amount of poor and misleading information there is on the Internet about this problem. The story exploded like wildfire last week but the reality is that this particular problem had been known for many months if not years. See this kernel bug report for example. The specific Samsung problem that hit the news is detailed here. Bricking firmware is not a new problem. It has been possible to do so since firmware was invented. The ability to brick a motherboard with UEFI firmware has been known for a long time. I, for example, bricked